Rick Rowell/ABCTonight, Bachelor in Paradise raised the bar.
That was an incredible, Emmy-worthy episode of TV. Whether the Emmy should be for writing, editing, or acting, we're not sure, but somebody needs an award for everything that just happened. Strap yourselves in, people. This is a trip.
We began right where we left off, with Evan on his way to unstick the faces of Josh and Amanda in order to take Amanda on the date he put together himself.
He made up a fake date card, and pretended it actually told him he had to invite Amanda. He pretended that the dinner set up in the treehouse was a total surprise to him. It was somehow even more cringe-worthy than Chris Harrison's opening erectile dysfunction jokes, to the point where we were having to pause the show and resist fast forwarding through the entire thing.
Evan, no.
"That's interesting!" Amanda said in response to the fake date card.
We wish she had said "No dude, I am literally making out with another man right now." But she didn't. She went on the date, and had to listen to Evan gush about how he came here for her, and he's been watching her from afar, and he totally respects what she has going on with Josh. Then why the heck did you invite her on this sham of a date, Evan?!
If nothing else, it did give Josh the opportunity to try not to think about Nick and Amanda, and to eat some random slices of pizza, which would have been a whole pizza if there weren't one slice mysteriously missing.
"Right now I don't want to focus on it. I want to focus on the important things in life," he said as he wiped the grease off the pizza, then started chowing down, moaning as if Amanda were that pizza. "If you have not had a pizza in Mexico before, it's pretty darn good. Pretty darn good. I don't have it too often, but out here in Mexico, I kinda want to have it every day."
Ah yes, that classic Mexican pizza.
Anyway, Amanda was nicely turning Evan down. "This is so great. This is so nice," she told him, but at this point, she really really liked Josh. Evan totally understood, but he also was pretty sure he saw a spark in her eye, which is coincidentally almost the title of Lauren Bushnell's blog, Sparkle In Her Eye.
Josh was still having sex with his pizza (basically) when Amanda returned, and didn't stop. He held onto the pizza while they kissed, he continued eating pizza during his talking head, and he even got pizza on Amanda. We are fully shipping Josh and pizza.
Meanwhile, Evan went around telling people (mostly Jared) that Amanda had cried (which she at least pretended to do, for like a second) and told him she totally came to Paradise for him too, which she did not, according to what the cameras showed us. GIVE IT UP, EVAN.
That was only the first 10 minutes of two hours, you guys. We just wrote 500 words on 10 minutes of "reality" television. We are trash. Heavily invested, total trash.
But like…that wasn't even the end of it. Evan wasn't done. He interrupted Jamanda yet again, but this time he just wanted to tell Amanda to "be careful" after he heard about Andi Dorfman's tell-all book, which is definitely the companion book of the season.
Amanda genuinely became concerned, especially after talking to Lace and being reminded that all the women warned her too. But then, Lace went to tell Grant all about what was going on, only to completely not notice sweaty ol' Josh sitting right next to Grant. Josh was certainly not happy to hear that Evan was talking about him behind his back, or that anyone was talking about the TOTALLY FICTIONAL story told by his ex-fiancee, Andi Dorfman.
"We should never judge no matter what!" said a guy about whom all the negative things are apparently untrue. "It's a fictional story! The facts are that it's a fictional novel! The facts are that it's a fictional story!"
"Then why wouldn't you sue her for libel?" Evan asked, which is a very good question.
After a long pause, we finally got: "Why even acknowledge something that's so fictional, so untrue?"
OK, Josh. Whatever you say.
Then, it was Nick's turn to weigh in, just as a good friend of Amanda. He just wanted to add his voice to the chorus that was telling her to be worried about what was written in Andi's book, but it didn't work. Amanda still gave Josh her rose, leaving both Evan and Nick just sure they were goners.
"Somehow I always get stuck in this protector role…self-assigned protector role," Evan said, dejected, but at least he's becoming more self-aware-ish.
However, the night's biggest twist actually came from unexpected places during the rose ceremony. Carly had no one else to give her rose to, so she gave hers to Evan, believing he'd know it was a totally platonic rose. (He didn't.) Haley, on the other hand, was still wrestling with the fact that Brandon wasn't able to tell when the twins switched places during their date, so she gave her rose to Nick instead.
Brandon was then sent home, without a clue as to why.
The rose ceremony's last big surprise came from Sarah. Despite having said that her date with Christian was the best date she'd ever been on, she gave her rose to Canadian Daniel! And we're kind of happy about it? Are we starting to love Canadian Daniel?! Huh??
Anyway, Christian wasn't happy, because he's a grown ass man! Whatever. Bye Christian!
Up next, it was time to shake some things up with Caila, who felt "a little sex panther" hitting the beach with a date card. The guys were almost drooling as they waited to find out who she would ask on her date.
She eventually asked Jared, while all the women probably plotted ways to steal Caila's perfect hair. Because Jared is a gentleman, he told Caila he had to talk to Emily first, and because Emily's a sweetheart, she told him to go. It was all very sweet and sad and mostly really sad, because Jared is just too nice to actually say he wants to date Caila instead of Emily.
Their date was magical, of course. Emily was toast. Jared had to tell her that when he came back from his magical date, and it was just so sad. She cried. We cried. We didn't cry, but we thought about it.
Anyway, after Daniel drank water from Vinny's bellybutton and Sarah and Carly compared themselves to Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets, Lace, Izzy (Who?) and their guys were invited on Bachelor in Paradise's first double date.
Grace and Vizzy (their official couple names) called themselves the Fantastic Four and had a truly lovely time at dinner, gushing over each other, talking about 2-for-1 weddings. Then they went to a foam party, and got some Magic Mike XXL action, and then laid down for body shots, only to have water poured on them by some random girl.
The police arrived…for nothing, and no fights were started, because Grant has Lace's back. So…that was a letdown.
Back on the beach, Carly and Sarah then decided to invite Daniel and Evan (ugh) over for drinks and games, and Evan just couldn't be normal for one second. He got very drunk and tried to kiss Carly again, before literally passing out in his bed. A producer couldn't wake him up! Medical had to be called! And then he was fine, but confused, and then he was hitting on Carly again, and she was resisting, and then they were making out, and we've never hated anything more. This was actually the worst thing we've ever seen. Bad Carly! Bad!
And then we watched Amanda and Josh have sex, accompanied by moaning (obviously) and sad shots of Nick and a montage of orgasm metaphors, and we actually almost cried because the editing on this show is just so beautiful.
And then, Ashley I arrived! Jared's on again, off again, virgin BFF/wannabe lover is about to join the party, and she is not going to be happy about the Caila situation. In fact, according to the preview, she's going to be about as unhappy as she can possibly be.
Also according to the preview for tomorrow night, we're going to get an answer to the age old question, "And what's with the Aztec warriors?"
Emmys. For. All.
Bachelor in Paradise airs Mondays and Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on ABC.